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Macron Campaign Emails Leaked

Wikileaks released more than twenty thousand emails from the presidential campaign of French President Emmanuel Macron two days ago. The emails were released as a searchable archive of the whistleblowing site on Monday. This did not come as a surprise to many because the campaign had been hacked a day before the election. The question had been when this would be released. It was anticipated that they would be released sometime in the coming months. Wikileaks has made a name for itself. It published huge troves of records of US spy agencies. They said that the emails dated between March 2009 and April 2017. The emails were sent or received by individuals who were affiliated with the campaign. This is according to the organization. They verified this by cross-checking the domains that were used to sign the emails. Additional 50,000 emails that were sent could not be verified, but they were still published.

There are 4,400 unique senders and more than 70,000 emails in a total of all parties involved. The Macron presidential campaign chose to disclose that they had been hacked a few days before the election. They blamed Russian groups for conducting the hack. Researchers who were investigating the incident linked a Russian hacking group known as APT28 to the hack. This is the same group that infiltrated the US Democratic Party in last year’s election. APT28 is also known as Fancy Bears. It is said to be backed by the Kremlin. Russia denied playing any role in the hack. They said that they were not involved. Guillaume Poupard is the head of the French cyber-security agency. Guillaume said that they had found no evidence that Russia was involved. The comments made by Poupard were referenced by Wikileaks when the emails were released.

The emails showed that senior advisors to Macron wanted him to push Britain to be more involved with defense projects in Europe. Macron was advised that defense ties with Britain were more important than the plans for a joint military integration of all EU countries. The advisors pointed to the divisions that Germany and France have had over defense cooperation within the EU in the past. This is in contrast to the claims by the EU that Brexit will allow them to come up with a new plan for defense cooperation going forward. Many Brexit negotiators believe that defense and security will play a significant role when negotiating the terms for the breakup.